2/5/08

Super Tuesday Sawing in the Living Room

One word. Sciatica. I had never heard this damn word until a couple of weeks ago. And now, it plagues me like walnut stain clings to new designer jeans. So I'm dealing with this odd pain that runs down my back all the way into my knee and trying to minimize it by not lifting heavy or awkward wooden things...like toy boxes. You see where this is going.

I have this toy box that's going to be shipped tomorrow and I needed to add the hardware so I lift it and bring it into the house to make sure it's on a flat surface (dining room table) in order to install the hinges. Not a problem just a bit uncomfortable. Now here comes the good part. I needed to jigsaw the hand openings on the front that give some finger room to lift up the toy box lid. Normally, before Sciatica, I would have taken it back out to the garage to cut and hand sand and apply stain. With Sciatica, I gently put the toy box on the living room floor, mark it accordingly, fire up the hand jigsaw and proceed to cut the openings. And sand it. Then apply stain to the new hand openings while watching American Idol.

Did I mention I left the saw dust on the living room floor? And that it's still there?

Pretty soon, Scott will come home from a business trip and the entire garage will be set up in the family room. Ah, Sciatica.

** Tomorrow I'll post about the "You Made My Day" award given by a very cool blogger named Carrie Kim.

Sorry to hear about your sciatica. I suffer from it as well. Although, I was happy to hear that you also invade the living room with "mess". My husband certainly comes home to clay dust and bits in the living room and on the dining room table all the time. "Don't you HAVE a studio?!" Ah, well. Just wanted to let you know that I LOVE your work. And don't push it! The pain only gets worse if you don't let it heal!

Thanks to both of you! I appreciate the get well wishes and the kudos on the Etsy front page!! And shoshonasnow, thanks for telling me to not push it as I was contemplating heading out for a run. Not that I feel like running just my own damn "push it til you kill yourself" mentality.

Yes, Mr. Sciatica has visited me and the best advice I can give you is get yourself a good chiropractor. It will make a world of difference. Yes, the fabric follows me wherever. And I think it really peeves him. But oh well!

Sciatica Sucks! Ha Ha,isn't that profound? I've had bouts of it and it seems(for me anyways) to get worse if I push too hard or too little. Total rest made it worse. And trying to ignore it made it much worse. But walking while concentrating on my breathing and posture and all that jazz seemed to help quite a bit. Who knows if that would help for anyone else though. Oh and yoga. Yoga helped a lot!Ha, I know you just need to set up one of those conveyor belt things, like at UPS, to roll your furniture around the house. That's not intrusive right? Ha!